PowerShell – Finding properties to use in a Select statement

Last evening I get an email from an IT Pro asking how he could find properties that can be used in a Select command in PowerShell.

So, when you use a command like Get-VM | Select VM,Name how do you know which other properties can use next to VM and Name?
This is where the command Get-Member comes in.
When you run Get-VM | Get-Member you will get an output of the properties that can be used in the Select statement.

But… the properties are not always universal. With this I mean to say that when you do the same for the Get-VM | Get-Snapshot command, so run Get-VM | Get-Snapshot | Get-Member, and will give you a different output compared to what you got with the Get-VM | Get-Member.

Although I think a property like Name will just about always be the same…